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Jim Thompson Biography

Jim Thompson wrote crime novels during the 1950s and ’60s, many of which have since been turned into movies, including The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet. Thompson grew up in Oklahoma and had a series of odd jobs while trying to make it as a writer. He found a publisher in 1942, but didn’t achieve much success until his 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me (filmed in 2010). He spent some time in Hollywood, working with Stanley Kubrick on The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957), but mostly Thompson made ends meet by cranking out novels and publishing true crime articles for magazines. He wasn’t considered a master of the crime genre until his books were rediscovered in the 1980s, a decade after his death. Thompson specialized in stories of sociopathic losers on the road to ruin. His novels include Savage Night (1953), After Dark, My Sweet (1955, movie in 1990), The Getaway (1959, movie in 1972 and again in 1994) and The Grifters (1963, movie in 1990).